Pine Manual

June 7, 1995

Pine Reference Manual

NAME

PINE - a Program for Internet News and Email

SYNTAX

pine [ options ] [ address , address ]

pinef [ options ] [ address , address ]

Pine is a screen-oriented message-handling tool. In its default configuration, Pine offers an intentionally limited set of functions geared toward the novice user, but it also has a growing list of optional "power-user" and personal-preference features. pinef is a variant of Pine that uses function keys rather than mnemonic single-letter commands. Pine's basic feature set includes:

Email Messaging: View, Save, Export, Delete, Print, Reply and Forward messages.
Email Message Creation and Editing: Compose messages in a simple editor (Pico) with word-wrap and a spelling checker. Messages may be postponed for later completion.
Email Message Folders: Full-screen selection and management of message folders.
Address Book: Address book to keep a list of long or frequently-used addresses. Personal distribution lists may be defined. Addresses may be taken into the address book from incoming mail without retyping them.
Email Notification: New mail checking and notification occurs automatically every 2.5 minutes and after certain commands, e.g., refresh-screen (Ctrl-L).
Help: On-line, context-sensitive help screens.

Pine supports MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), an Internet Standard for representing multipart and multimedia data in email. Pine allows you to save MIME objects to files, and in some cases, can also initiate the correct program for viewing the object. It uses the system's mailcap configuration file to determine what program can process a particular MIME object type. Pine's message composer does not have integral multimedia capability, but any type of data file --including multimedia--can be attached to a text message and sent using MIME's encoding rules. This allows any group of individuals with MIME-capable mail software (e.g., Pine, PC-Pine, or many other programs) to exchange formatted documents, spreadsheets, image files, etc, via Internet email.

Pine uses the c-client messaging API to access local and remote mail folders. This library provides a variety of low-level message-handling functions, including drivers for a variety of different mail file formats, as well as routines to access remote mail and news servers, using IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol). Outgoing mail is usually handed-off to the Unix sendmail, program but it can optionally be posted directly via SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

OPTIONS

The command line options/arguments are:

address: Send mail to address. This will cause Pine to go directly into the message composer.
-a: Special anonymous mode for UWIN*
-d debug-level: Output diagnostic info at debug-level (0-9) to the current .pine-debug[1-4] file. A value of 0 turns debugging off and suppresses the .pine-debug file.
-f folder: Open folder (in default mail dir) instead of INBOX.
-F file: Open named text file and view with Pine's browser.
-h: Help: list valid command-line options.
-i: Start up in the FOLDER INDEX screen.
-I keystrokes: Initial (comma separated list of) keystrokes which Pine should execute on startup.
-k: Use function keys for commands. This is the same as running the command pinef.
-l: Expand all collections in FOLDER LIST display.
-n number: Start up with current message-number set to number.
-nr: Special mode for UWIN*
-o: Open first folder read-only.
-p config-file: Use config-file as the personal configuration file instead of the default .pinerc.
-P config-file: Use config-file as the configuration file instead of default system-wide configuration file pine.conf.
-r: Use restricted/demo mode. Pine will only send mail to itself and functions like save and export are restricted.
-z: Enable ^Z and SIGTSTP so pine may be suspended.
-conf: Produce a sample/fresh copy of the system-wide configuration file, pine.conf, on the standard output. This is distinct from the per-user .pinerc file.
-create_lu addrbook sort-order: Creates auxiliarly index (look-up) file for addrbook and sorts addrbook in sort-order, which may be dont-sort, nickname, fullname, nickname-with-lists-last, or fullname-with-lists- last. Useful when creating global or shared address books.
-pinerc file: Output fresh pinerc configuration to file.
-sort order: Sort the FOLDER INDEX display in one of the following orders: arrival, subject, from, date, size, orderedsubj or reverse. Arrival order is the default. The OrderedSubj choice simulates a threaded sort. Any sort may be reversed by adding /reverse to it. Reverse by itself is the same as arrival/reverse.
-option=value: Assign value to the config option option e.g., -signature-file=sig1 or -feature-list=signature-at-bottom (Note: feature-list values are additive)

* UWIN = University of Washington Information Navigator

CONFIGURATION

There are several levels of Pine configuration. Configuration values at a given level over-ride corresponding values at lower levels. In order of increasing precedence:

built-in defaults.
system-wide pine.conf file.
personal .pinerc file (may be set via built-in Setup/Config menu.)
command-line options.
system-wide pine.conf.fixed file.

There is one exception to the rule that configuration values are replaced by the value of the same option in a higher-precedence file: the feature-list variable has values that are additive, but can be negated by prepending "no-" in front of an individual feature name. Unix Pine also uses the following environment variables:

TERM
DISPLAY: (determines if Pine can display IMAGE attachments.)
SHELL: (if not set, default is /bin/sh )
MAILCAPS: (semicolon delimited list of path names to mailcap files)

FILES